4 More Hotjar Alternatives for Website Visitor Engagement

It has been some time I was in search of an analytics tool that could help me dig into ‘who’ visits my website and ‘what’ exactly they do. If you are a business owner or a blogger, I’m sure you have the same thoughts too. The very first tool I used for this purpose was Hotjar, and followed by this tool used some of the Hotjar alternatives.

Hotjar is not a replacement to Google Analytics. Rather, I would say Hotjar will supplement you with all those metrics that you cannot get in the free Google Analytics account. You can hear David Darmanin, founder of Hotjar, speak on how Hotjar can fuel conversion.

Google Analytics has been of great help, but it is always better to have more insights into data. In this article, I will walk you through the features and other details of Hotjar. Also, I will tell you about some of the Hotjar alternatives that I have found. So, let’s start with Hotjar.

Hotjar

Hotjar is an all-in-one Analysis and Feedback tool. It provides you with a bigger picture on how to improve your website’s performance and user experience (conversion rates). Hotjar lets you see how your users are using your site.

One thing that I loved about Hotjar is the page for their Founding Members. It lists down all the beta testers who used Hotjar first, gave feedback and has helped in making Hotjar what it is today. The important aspect is, the company took the effort to mention all of them. This is like a brownie point! 🙂

Hotjar combines:

Analytics tools: Allows you to observe and measure the behaviour of users while they visit your site.

All the impressive features of Hotjar gets a lot more elevated when you see the pricing of this tool Undoubtedly, this tool beats all others in the market with its affordability. Let’s be honest here. However, good a product is, if it’s too pricey we kind of cringe away! So, here’s a win-win situation for Hotjar- excellent features+pocket-friendly price.

I saw it on Product Hunt. I was using Crazy Egg and Optimizely, but when I started using Hotjar as a BETA tester, I was blown away. The price point was and still is unbeatable, and it’s just straight up a better product all the way around. It was a no-brainer. I was hooked immediately. ~ Garrett Mehrguth, CEO of Directive Consulting on How Hotjar helped him.

Let’s move on with how Hotjar can help you have more engagements and conversions, before we discuss the pricing plans.

Analysing the Website with Hotjar

Hotjar’s Heatmaps is the most sought after tool. The heatmaps are fabulous. They will give you a detailed insight on the areas where you visitors are spending the maximum time. If this wasn’t cool enough, Hotjar’s heatmaps will also show you heatmaps by device: Desktops, Mobiles and tablets.

Heatmaps from Hotjar covers all the requisite functionalities- from Clicks, taps to Scrolling. You can easily create a heatmap for any given page.

While using Hotjar, more than the heatmaps, the Recordings became my favourite part. You can get real-time insight as you see how your visitors are moving and navigating around your website. It is simply a delight.

With the Recording feature, you can capture every visitor’s sessions the moment they hit the website. While you find it creepy that someone can watch you over as you navigate through their site, you can do the same!

Starting with the clicks to scrolls and movement of each visitor- you can track it all. And not just track, Hotjar also allows you to record and tag it. The tagging feature is new on Hotjar and is amazing.

This is how tagging works: For instance, you have an eCommerce website. You see a large chunk of the audience making mobile accessories’ purchase. You can tag them as “Electronic accessories”. Many visitors come via your blog, whom you can tag as “Blogs”, and so on. I think this is a great feature. It gives me details that matter the most. Here’s what exactly you can do:

Replay the sessions of real site visitors

Tag Recordings

View the actions of your users and take note for reference

Share recordings with anyone

Filter recordings according to your needs.

Hotjar’s Funnels feature did attract me. Although I’d still turn to Clickfunnels, I went ahead and tried Hotjar’s funnel feature too. You can easily create a simple funnel for your website with unlimited steps. It is a powerful feature. You can improve your website on specific spots, especially where you find your users leaving your website.

Next feature in the queue is the Forms Feature. Without any second thoughts, Forms feature is the best from Hotjar. Suppose you need a contact form or a membership signup form, the Hotjar Forms will come handy. However, this isn’t the best part. Every other form builder does that!

Forms on Hotjar show you how far your visitors have filled in and exactly where or when are they dropping off. This means you have the option to test different forms and decide on the one that your visitors will not ditch half-way. Let me give you an example.

Suppose you have a question like “Where did you find ABC (your website name)?”, And you see a continuous drop-off to this question. Thus, the next move will be to remove this question. You can either test your form without this question or replace it with another question.

The Forms also gives your detailed reports on:

Time your visitors require to fill out each field

Conversion rate of the form

Total number of form sessions

Graphic representation of the drop-offs

Total number of failed and successful submissions of the form

Without user feedback, it is nearly impossible to improve your website. Hotjar’s Poll feature is downright simple. The interface is smooth, and all it takes is just 30 seconds to create a poll. Although I was never keen on running polls on my website, Hotjar’s Polling feature is a convincing one. You can garner some really helpful data and feedback through the Hotjar Polls.

The results are easily understandable. You can choose to get the result in replies or result format. Along with the data and feedback, you also get details like screen size (device from which the poll was taken by the user), country, date, page, etc. The most striking part of the result is the desktop vs. mobile part! You can easily customise your Poll to get the desired results.

Another feature that I wasn’t aware of is Hotjar’s WordCloud. Hotjar basically takes into account all the frequently used words in polls from your users and creates a word cloud out of them.

Similar to Polls feature, Hotjar provides yet another feature to know your users better. The Survey feature allows you to get constructive feedback from your users. You can select the kind of questions that you need to be answered. Hotjar lets build a survey for various kinds of answers, like:

Short and/or long answers

Radio buttons

Checkboxes

Net promoter score

The interface is immaculate that is sure to click with your users. The Survey forms from Hotjar picks up the look and feel of your site, blending it nicely with the user experience you want your visitors to get on your website.

Lastly, we have the Recruiter feature. Now this is not about recruiting talents for your company! Jokes apart, the Recruiter feature lets you connect with the best testers for user research and testing right from your site. You collect profile information and in exchange for their contribution give them gifts.

I’d like to call it an advanced version of Polls. If you are a software company or engaged in making a web plugin, this feature will come handy. The widget is customizable to suit your needs.

Hotjar Pricing Plans

Yep! That’s right. The free trial and the money back guarantee options lured me to a great extent. Hotjar has three pricing plans- Basic, Plus, and Business. If you are looking for a pricing plan to suit an enterprise, Hotjar has that covered too.

Basic Plan includes up to three months data storage, 2,000 page views per day. Manage up to 3 Heatmaps, polls, funnels, surveys, and forms: 300 recordings.

PLUS comes at just $29 per month. You can manage an unlimited number of items, recordings, and snapshots, and improved data storage for up to 6 months.

BUSINESS is for enterprise and SMBs and starts from $89 per month. You can secure your data storage for one year; manage an unlimited number of items, recording, and snapshots. You can expect improved pageviews from 20,000 to 200,000 page views per day.

This brings us to the conclusion of Hotjar Review. Hotjar is constantly updating the tool to make it better. Some time back Hotjar touched a milestone of 60,000+ users, including clients like Hubspot, Booking.com, Pingdom, and many more.

Hotjar Support

Hotjar does a lot to provide support to all its users. Here’s what you get:

Documentation

Hotjar has laid down step by step guide on all the features– how to use and what to do. Whether you are stuck with the installation, or wondering how to use one of the feature- Hotjar has it all covered. Along with that, there are links to FAQs that you can refer. The most important document is on “How Hotjar is differentr from Google Analytics”.

Data Security

Hotjar knows how sensitive data can be, and does everything to keep your and your website’s data safe and secured. Even the visitor’s privacy is kept in mind. To know more details on how data is stored and secured, check out the Data Security Page.

Site Performance

Often it happens that a new tool brings down your website’s performance. This is a persistent question, and Hotjar has it answered. It goes on to explain the impact Hotjar will have on your site performace. So, before you start using, you can very well be aware of what you are geting into. I’d say, you MUST read the information given on Site Performance before proceeding.

Hotjar Alternatives

It is foolish to draw conclusions without comparison. Even Hotjar urges its users to make a price comparison before buying. It makes sense- only when you compare two things, you get a better understanding of which one you need. So, in this article now I will compare Hotjar alternatives with three more other tools: Mouseflow, Luckyorange.

Hotjar alternative – Mouseflow

The features of Hotjar and Mouseflow are very similar: Heatmaps, forms, funnels and session replay. You can integrate Mouseflow with platforms like Joomla, Shopify, WordPress, Google Analytics, Hubspot, and many more. The powerful RESTful API gives you full control over your data. Let’s quickly go over the feature of Mouseflow-

Screen Replay

Mouseflow’s tracking system will remind you of a CCTV footage! Starting with clicks, mouse movements, scrolls, to filling out forms- Mouseflow tracks every single move of your visitor.

Filters and Segments

Pinpoint a session easily within seconds. Sorting and filtering get a tad more seamless- segment your audience by location, OS, platform, traffic source, etc. The best part: You can save each filter to use later or quick analysis.

Compatibility

Mouseflow works efficiently on all the devices with a modern browser- desktops, tablets, and phones. You get complete support for checkout, dynamic content, or member-only pages. Also, all these doesn’t slow down your site.

Heatmaps

Ah! The reason we are here! Mouseflow has click/touch and movement heatmaps. It grabs your attention to the elements that attract your visitors most. You can track their navigation and keep working on improving your site tractions.

The other feature inclusive is the scroll and attention heatmap. This lets you know which part of your site exactly manages to retain, attract, and engage your visitors most.

If you are looking for information like which part of the world is viewing your site more, the Geo Heatmaps from Mouseflow can come handy. You can discover the geological patterns and target visitors based on such real-time data.

Funnels

You can get an overview of your visitor’s journey- from start to end. Mouseflow gives you a page-to-page overview through which you can analyze your visitor’s journey. You can know where your visitors are dropping off, and fix that. The entire navigation process is right in front of you!

Form Analytics

The way every visitor interacts or engages in your forms is an important metric. And Mouseflow gives you that. You can measure where they dropped off, which question triggered a negative response, errors, blank submissions, and much more. With details like these, you can work to increase conversions.

Affiliates

Mouseflow claims to rely on word-of-mouth for their growth. Thus, they provide a recurring commission to all those who contribute to their growth! The benefits are somewhat like this:

10% on All Referral Plans {The payment happens on a monthly basis till the time you have a paid account and is an active user}

GDPR update: The Mouseflow website has provided a detailed overview of all the steps they have taken to ensure GDPR compliance. You can check the details on their website.

Hotjar vs. Mouseflow

If it’s about users’ trust and confidentiality, then Hotjar takes the winner’s cup! Hotjar offers an open standard for users to develop confidence with them with their transparency. The likelihood of users’ recommendation to Hotjar over mouse flow is a lot higher. Points of differences:

Hotjar Alternative: Freshmarketer

The next Hotjar alternative we have is Freshmarketer. Freshmarketer is more of a conversion rate optimization tool. Features like A/B testing, Heatmaps, and Funnel Analysis modules take the limelight. With a 30-Day free trial for 5000 unique visitors, Freshmarketer provides a smooth website experience. Recently, Freshmarketer also announced the Polls and Feedback feature.

Features of Freshmarketer include:

Live heatmaps for interactive elements

A/B testing via Chrome plugin

Split URL testing

Funnel analysis

Form analytics

Polls and Feedback

Before you sign up for the trail version, you can even request a demo. Freshmarketer offers a very detailed documentation. The integration with Google analytics, and with some third party integrations like Google Tag Manager, Unbounce, WordPress, Squarespace, GoDaddy, Magento, Joomla, Wix, and Weebly makes Freshmarketer a great Hotjar alternative.

Freshmarketer launched its next version Freshmarketer 2.0 with more enhanced features. The existing features got a make-over and some new features got released. Here’s what Freshmarketer 2.0 version is all about:

Increased Web Form Conversions

You can now drill down the specific behaviours of your users on the web forms. Things like how much average time they spent on the form, how many unique views and responses you got, what are the drop-off numbers, rate of form abandonment, blank rates of fields, etc can be known real-time.

Read your Visitors’ Mind

Polls and Feedback feature lets you ask your visitors timely questions. After all, right timing is very important in a business. Questions like these help in understanding what the visitors are looking for and how satisfied they are. If you can set up a good set of questions, then kudos! You just made it as an omnipresent listener.

Multiple Users on Freshmarketer

You can have multiple accounts to increase efficiency and easy task delegation. Features like this are very helpful for marketing agencies!

Funnel Analysis

In the new Freshmarketer version, you can track visitor interactions on ‘virtual pages’. These pages do not have a unique URL but are a part of the funnel.

Heatmap

The updated version of Freshmarketer lets you restrict the tracking of visitor counts or percentage of traffic to be used in an experiment. This measure helps in avoiding spamming errors. This increases the heatmap accuracy.

Last is the revenue tracking. You can now track the monetary value of every action or event for each variety in the experiments.

Freshmarketer update:

Freshmarketer has introduced a new set of features to ensure GDPR compliance. They have revised their privacy and cookie policies along with full data management for all your EU customers. Also, their website offers detailed answers to all the GDPR related queries and how they are managing them. You can follow this link for more details.

Hotjar and Freshmarketer are almost similar. However, there are some major points where they are strikingly different. The first point of difference is the pricing plan.

Apart from the difference in the amount of each plan, the way calculations are done is different for both. Incase of Hotjar, the pricing plans are based on the total pageviews per month. On the contrary, the pricing plans of Freshmarketer are based on the total number of unique visitors per month.

Hotjar Alternative – Luckyorange

The bright orange color on the homepage is attractive enough to keep you scrolling for few seconds. Luckyorange introduces the platform as “The Original All-in-One Optimization Suite” and starts at just $10/month. Now that is cheaper than Hotjar. Let’s find out if it surpasses Hotjar with its features as well.

A quick look at the features:

Dashboard

The tagline that Luckyorange uses is cheesy! You cannot help but keep repeating it. The Dashboard is the one-stop for all the details you need- at a glance. You can see how many people are there on your site, and also how they found you. You get to compare all these information with historical statistics and analyze what is driving traffic to your site.

Recording

We have gone over the details of this feature in all the above-mentioned tool. If there is anything new to add to this functionality, it is this:

Heatmaps

Luckyorange pretty much does all that Hotjar, and Mouseflow does. Starting with the segmenting map by location, browser dates, devices, etc to understanding what people are doing and how!

Chat

This is one feature I like about Luckyorange. It integrates with your existing website and is compatible with all devices. With a host of powerful features like multiple operations, canned responses, and auto invites- The Chat feature is like the icing on the cake!

Form Analytics

Polls

Instant customer feedback is the way to go! And what better option that polls? Polls on Luckyorange are fully customized, can have multiple questions, can be redirected to URLs, and also triggered at the right moment.

Luckyorange nicely demonstrates its point of difference like this:

GDPR update: LuckyOrange is compliant with GDPR and has ensured all the necessary steps to take care of the privacy rights of the EU customers. Their major steps include:

Updated terms of services and privacy agreement.

Privacy shield certification

Improved visitor anonymity and de-identification.

Hotjar vs. Luckyorange

The first highlight is, Luckyorange lets you compare historical statistics and takes into consideration keywords, locations, referrers, tweets, languages, etc that are driving traffic to your site. And all of these are just on your Dashboard. Features include:

Recordings

Heatmaps

Conversion funnels

Form Analytics

Chat

Polls

Out of all the features, the Chat feature of Luckyorange is highly distinguishable. The ability to predict what your users need and answer them with tailored replies is a great feature. After all, it’s always great to have the ability to give personalized attention to your users. Honestly, I think Hotjar’s proactive chat is not yet upto this level.

However, I’d still say, Hotjar’s Survey feature alone makes this tool a winner. The option to get feedback and work upon them is crucial for any business or blogger or website owner.

Hotjar is the undisputed tool in analytics, having the largest market share in comparison to the tools we discussed above. Apart from these three, there are some other alternatives that you can try, like Crazy Egg, and Clicktale.

If you have found a better Hotjar alternatives tool, then tell me in comments exactly why you think so. Else, if you also agree that Hotjar is by-far the best tool in analytics, give me a buzz.

16 Comments

Hotjar helps its users to tag the different recording, view the actions of other users’ invariance and taking the reference notes, and share these recording with any other person or user, filter the recordings in accordance to the needs of the users, replay the sessions of visitors of the real websites, etc.

Amazing Suggestion. Indeed its used by big companies as well. Has unlimited agent support and also native mobile app for Android and iOS. Its completely free. if you want to remove the branding on the bottom, they charge you a little.

Nice Article, Ankit. Hotjar should be termed as a supplement to Google Analytics, that is quite an introduction in itself. It has got a mix of Analytics tools and Feedback tool. If it has changed your mind about surveys and polls, it is definitely worth a try.

Ankit, nice article. You say it is not a replacement for Google Analytics but rather complements it. But my only question is – can Hotjar work for Facebook Pages? I totally loved the experience you shared of the beta testers of Hotjar website testing and sending their feedback and making Hotjar website what it is today.

What will be the best analysis tool for an e-commerce website? I am planning to get my website online and looking for the right feedback and analysis tools for implementation. Are all the options mentioned in this article will work same for the e-commerce sites or some can be better than the other?